January 2008

Well… despite the somewhat favourable reviews this play has on it’s website, I wasn’t so impressed. In fact, by the intermission I was so bored I almost left Second Chef watching it and wandered off to the pub.

Thing is, you can’t blame the acting, which was good, and you can’t blame the set, which was pretty interesting, well-exploited, and fun. What you can blame is a bloody awful script. I had the impression that they had a product, and someone made them add about half an hour of filler. A bad half-hour.

Paua is set in a small town called “Waiwhero”, and a killer is on the loose. Some sort of terrorist, killing poachers to punish them for plundering the coastline. Frankly, it’s not such a bad idea…

The problem is, as stated, once the story actually kicks off. The level of gratuitous killing is high, in fact almost ridiculously high. There’s even a few scenes that were completely unnecessary, they had to add props for, they took up minutes of my life for, and were completely unnecessary. Spoilers after the jump… (more…)

I’ve always been a light sleeper, but during the bout of heart trouble I was having a lot of trouble with heavy dreaming (a side effect of the medication). Since coming off the heart drugs I’m still a light sleeper but finding that I’m waking up in the middle of the night (usually around 3am) and not being able to return to sleep.

It’s a freaking hassle, I’m tired for days at a time, and I’m bloody sick of it. The past few days have been the worse, I’m finding myself starting something then thinking, wtf was I doing?

I already have a few mechanisms in place, and if it keeps up I’m off to a professional. But any hints in the meantime are much appreciated.

One of myths repeated during the recent Rugby World Cup was the “losing girlfriend” scenario. It normally states that whenever the All Blacks (or another team) loses, incidents of bashed wives and girlfriends turning up at emergency departments or women’s refugees increases.

Turns out that there is good evidence for generalised violence linked to sports…

Frankly, this play is outright hilarious, and worth every last cent someone else payed to admit me.

Based on a little-known book of the same name, Young Lover is an amorous romp through the machinations of a young man who regards himself as the panacea to the woes of New Zealand, if only Helen would come round to the idea.

The play is more specifically a lecture delivered by Richard Meros (Arthur Meek), the author of the aforementioned book, and is adapted for the stage by Geoff Pinfield and Meek. A book that (strangely) was not mentioned and/or well-received by the Wellington press gallery. In the lecture Meros outlines not only why Helen should take him as her young lover, but also how and why it will usher in a ‘golden age’ for New Zealand. Genius.

The play is extremely well-written, extremely well-acted, and contains more gems, illuminations, satire and outright slap-your-knees-you’re-laughing-so-hard moments that you’ll feel rewarded just for turning up. Unless you work in Parliament, in which case you’ll want to perhaps wear a disguise, so as not to be seen laughing at what is a very heavy satire of the Labour Party and incumbent government.

The political jokes run thick and fast in this lecture, along with a number of outright lewd references to many people who are not Helen Clark (they don’t actually cross that line). There are even some fantastically arcane political science jokes in there, which only me and the two people sitting next to me (whom I did not know!) got.

Well, the stranger sitting next to me in the cinema seemed to think this was the funniest film in creation. I’m not convinced. Death at a Funeral is a slightly formulaic comedy set in a stately home somewhere in England. The patriarch has passed on, and the family is gathering to bid him farewell.

Then, introduce a gay dwarf and a pile of LSD, and make comedy…

Don’t get me wrong though, there were some genuine laughs in there, but on average the film was laid out on a bell curve of “intro, laughs, crisis, laughs, redemption, warm ending”.

I’ll you one thing though, when it comes down to it, some things are just plain funny, (more…)